Jane Levi

Stone Soup, October 2017, Volume 45 #8. Cover photograph: ‘Scrapes of Light’ by Delaney Slote, 10. A note from William Rubel Perhaps it was silly, and I’m sorry if you missed our regular Saturday Newsletter yesterday. But as today is October 1, and our latest issue is published today, I decided this week to make the Saturday Newsletter the Sunday—or Weekend—Newsletter plus new issue alert. Stone Soup’s new life is taking shape. We are producing more frequent issues (this is our second monthly issue) that are each a little shorter and also more focused than were the bi-monthly print editions. I can tell you that I have never been happier with the scale of the issues or the quality of what we are publishing than I am now. I encourage all of you to go to our website and check out the new October issue. Non-subscribers are entitled to several articles per month while our subscribers, of course, have full, unlimited access to everything. I want you to hear from the editor, Emma Wood, to get a flavour of what to expect this month. In her Editor’s Note she talks about the written work: “Fear, anger, anxiety, the elements—in the stories and poems in this issue, the characters and speakers are all confronting something big and frightening. Time seems to slow down, and nearly stop altogether, in both “Game Time” and “Perfection,” as nerves take over. In “Facing the Hurricane,” the speaker faces not only a dangerous storm, but his own (mis)understanding of his father. Meanwhile, Evelyn faces her loneliness at the thought of her best friend Abigail moving to Korea in “Only an Ocean Away”. In the poem, “I Remember the Water and the Wind,” the speaker discovers her own strength while encountering a storm head-on, and in “Candlenut Tree,” the speaker faces down—and overcomes—her anger “like lava ready to explode into the air”. If that isn’t enough to get you clicking on the link to start reading, I’d like to call your attention to the art in the issue as well. This is now the second issue in which art is published for its own sake, rather than as an illustration to a story.  It’s been a wonderful process to review submissions of work that both stands in its own right and—as I hope you’ll agree—complements the writing in the magazine, starting with “Scrapes of Light”, the striking and evocative cover image. You will find three other photographs in the issue, including a second but very different photograph taken through a rain-spattered window (“Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada”), that conveys a profound melancholy and stillness. “Girl Asleep”, with its different sense of calm and gorgeous muted colour palette feels almost painterly in its framing, textures and timeless subject, while “The Look” gives us a portrait that stands for itself, popping out of its dark background and, at the same time, inviting a thousand questions abut what that look might mean. I’d also like to mention the exquisite and accomplished watercolor, “Mountain Quail.” Whenever I look at it it makes me feel calm. It is a gentle but powerful work of art. If you are interested in photography—whether you are a Stone Soup aged reader or a grownup—I think you will find the photographs in this issue moving, and I hope they will inspire you to pick up a camera and go out into the world looking for images and ideas that engage you in some way. And if you are someone who loves art in any form, why not send us a review of an artwork or exhibit you have enjoyed recently? Thank you so much to all our wonderful Stone Soup writers and artists. Great work. Updates: Selfie Contest and December Food Issue I just discovered that while I announced our second Selfie Contest last week I had not made the Selfie Contest submission category live on our site. My apologies. The category is now up, so if you had tried and failed to upload your selfie contribution, you can do so today. And, if you haven’t entered the contest yet, please read the post on our website and start taking pictures! The deadline for the December Food Issue is coming up. We have some great submissions—thank you. If you still have ideas for that issue that you haven’t sent to us yet, there is still time—but don’t leave it too long! And of course we welcome submissions any time on any topic that inspires you. Keep on sharing your creations with us! Until next week, William Business Update Well, I’m sure that all of you who have small businesses know that one often finds that everything takes longer to accomplish than you thought it would. It’s been hard work managing our transition to digital by ourselves, and we’re very happy to report that our transfer back to the fulfilment house that handled print subscriptions for Stone Soup when we were sending issues to your homes is now nearly complete. As soon as we have our new, improved, subscription form in place you will be able to renew, subscribe and select from all of our Stone Soup packages, including placing orders for our new print Annual. You will be able to choose between digital only, print Annual only, or (the best deal), a combined digital and print Annual subscription. I am pretty confident that next week I will be able to announce that we are back in business with a more industry standard subscription form. Our Newsletter readers will be the first to know! Thank you, as always, for your support, William From Stone Soup November/December 2005 A Wider World By Christy Joy Frost, 13 Illustrated by Vivien Rubin, 13 Kayla dropped the laundry basket down by the washing machine. This was the last load to bring down. She was hot from running up and down the stairs all morning. She rolled up her sleeves and looked around the basement. The unfinished cement walls looked bare and cold, brightened only by the dabs of paint she had splotched there when she was five. She climbed the wooden stairs to the kitchen where her mother

““Potatoes again?” groaned Jasper, Sam’s eight-year-old cousin”. Illustrator Anton Dymtchenko, 13, for ‘Shepherd of Stonehenge’ by Casey Tolan, 13. Published November/December 2007, and in The Stone Soup Book of Historical Fiction (2013). A note from William Rubel When I was in college I fell in love with the writing of the Danish writer, Karen Blixen (1885-1962). The first book I saw of hers was a fabulously beautiful edition of her first book, Out of Africa, that was edited by President Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Onassis. That book was heavily illustrated with paintings by one of her African workers, Kamante. I will write about Kamante’s paintings in another Newsletter. Today, I’d like to keep the focus on our special December food issue. Karen Blixen wrote under the pen name of Isak Dinesen–Dinesen was her name before she married. She became famous for her short stories. And of her short stories, she became most famous for one: Babette’s Feast. It is a story with many, many ‘abouts’. Certainly, one can say it is a story about a meal–a feast that Babette makes for her employers and friends. It is a meal that is a pure expression of love, of art, of generosity in many senses. The meal the story is about is a gift that goes far beyond the food on the table. It is the biggest gift that Babette could give to anyone. But, of course, all good stories need a problem. And one of the problems is that the people she is making the meal for, her Danish employers and friends, have never taken an interest in food. In fact, they worry that taking an interest in food is wrong. The meal Babette makes for them is so fabulous and so outside their usual experience that each person who sat at that table was changed. Babette is French and in Paris she was a renowned and celebrated cook. But, through the fortunes of life, she ends up working in Denmark. Let me just say, that the food culture of Paris and the food culture of rural Denmark at the time this story takes place (about 150 years ago) are at opposite extremes. The people she lives amongst in Denmark are emotionally very closed. They tend not to express their feelings and they are suspicious of pleasure. In fact, their religion is distrustful of pleasure, and so are they. After working in this house in Denmark for almost fifteen years, Babette comes into some money. What she does with it is make a dinner like the meals she used to cook in Paris. Isak Dinesen’s story is all about that meal. How it came about, what she cooked, what meant to her, and what it meant to the people who ate it. It is not a story written for young readers, but I do think that some of you will find it engaging–and  of course, the adult readers of the newsletter should all read it! A movie was made from it which you can rent for a few dollars. Like the book, this was made for adults, so I suggest watching it with your parents or grandparents. Many of  them may have already seen it, as the movie won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1988. A dessert from the movie of Babette’s Feast (1987, Dir. Gabriel Axel). ‘Savarin au Rhum avec des Figues et Fruits Glacées’ (Rum baba with figs and crystallized fruit) Tell us your food stories! Babette’s Feast is a wonderful story partly because it is all about food–and at the same time nothing to do with food at all. It is really about a moment in history, the people in the story, their different cultures, their feelings, and the ways those can develop and change though social interactions like a meal. Many of you will be living in households in which one parent is from one food culture and the other parent from another. Or you have a grandparent who was born in another country and whose food is special or very different from what you are used to. When my daughter was in pre-school we were invited to a birthday party of a classmate. Her mother is from the Philippines. Let me tell you something. I think unless you are from the Philippines yourself, you will not believe the feast that was cooked for that five-year-old’s birthday party. There was so much food! So many different dishes, savoury and sweet: there was real energy around this food. This was not a table of sandwiches and cookies. Of course, this meal that the girl’s mother made for her birthday was a meal of love. And of course, she made for her daughter the kind of meals that her mother had made for her. Her father is not from the Philippines, and he is vegetarian. The birthday food of his childhood would have been very different. If you have different food cultures within your family, or those of friends, or can think of a story idea that revolves, somehow, around food and culture, please start writing! Or produce an image that says something that words can’t quite convey. We want to receive your food stories and artworks by October 10. From Stone Soup January/February 2005 A Second Begninning By Preston Craig, 10 Illustrated by Natalie Chin, 12 It was a dark, cloudy evening when Father told us the news. Our family was gathered around the worn dinner table in the small kitchen of our farmhouse. My father was sitting in his usual seat at the head of the table, his callused hands clasped together and his elbows resting on the faded tablecloth. He looked from me to my eleven-year-old brother, James, and finally to my mother. Her eyes looked sad as she met his nervous gaze. They had been strangely quiet all through dinner. As eleven- and thirteen-year-old children, my brother and I rarely spoke at the table unless we were spoken to. Mother took a deep breath. “Jack,” she said quietly. “What’s done is done. We must tell the children.” She sighed and brushed a strand of blond hair out of her brown eyes. Father nodded. His face was lined with sorrow, which startled me. He was a strong man. Everything about him seemed sturdy. He stood six feet tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, with sunburned skin from years of working in the cornfields of our farm